Bottomless Pit of Zorth

Posted on February 16, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By G. Hawkins
Self Published
OSRIC
Levels 3-5

The Bottomless Pit of Zorth has stood as a place of inscrutable mystery and dread since time immemorial, yet not few of the brave and reckless have tried their luck within its deep and reportedly never ending depths. Those lucky enough to survive can attest to its apparent bottomless nature, but spoke more of the alienness and oddness of the place: the unfathomable purpose of the giant rotating pin that pierces down into the depths; the otherworldly machinery; and the crazed and demented denizens that for reasons unknown defended the hellish hole. These survivors often left with a sense that there was a deliberate design and purpose to the Pit and that a terrible but inhuman intellect ruled and guided all, though none have yet seen or met this assuredly dreadful master.

This 56 page digest adventure details a six-ish level dungeon with around 65 rooms. A seriously fucked up 65 level dungeon that will represent a strange, alien-like slime environment, the likes of which are seldom seen in an rpg adventure. Which is a good thing. Decent formatting, weird environments with interactivity, and decent evocative writing are only detracted from by a tendency to run long in word count. Not to excess, but it’s getting there.

This is a decent adventure. You probably want it. The deciding factor is probably the vibe of the environment, so I’m going to talk about that first. It’s a slime dungeon. Meaning that just about every surface is covered in slime or has some sort of slime feature. The monsters are either outright slime monsters (new ones) or some kind of hybrid slime creature, as shown on the cover. Does the cover appeal to you? Yes? Then this adventuring environment is for you! One section is, literally, completely slime covered (in the non-monster sense) as if you are are walking through a body or some such. Oh, oh, I know! Remember those Psychedelic Fantasy adventures I really likes? Three of them were REALLY bizarre environments, alien-like. This gets close to that vibe, but, stays solidly in the D&D camp. It’s a pretty good realization of a slime themed environment, and in fact is probably the best slime themed environment I’ve seen in terms of reinforcing the theme. But, it’s still recognizable as a D&D dungeon. 

There are six levels to the dungeon, or about that. There’s a central shaft, huge and empty, and a central pillar in the middle of it, floatig in the air, with a bridge over the shaft to the central column at the surface. Then you go down the column and see, at about six different points on the walls, some cave entrances. You need to figure out how to get from the central piller to the cave walls. Oh, aalso, the bottom is filled with lava. And, also, it’s bottomless. Yes, these two things work together. Also, the shaft spins. And is broken in to segments, each of which spins in a different direction. And there are chains that swing. And there are hidden teleporter portals, invisible, that youneed to make a leap of faith to use to get to hidden areas of the dungeon. Also, did I mention that everything is slime themed? There’s a fuck ton going on in this thing. And I’ve JUST described a small part of the central shaft and pillar and haven’t even gotten to the rooms yet!

The central shaft/pillar thing is the only part of the adventure tha tis in any way difficult to understand, and I finally figured it out a little way in to the adventure. There are both traditional maps and lots of side view maps to help the DM understand the verticality of the situation. (And VTT maps for the internet crowd) Each of the six dungeon levels has a little section up front explaining what is going on and how the rooms work together and then each room has a little up fron paragraph description, with certain words bolded and those bolded words followe dup on later in their own paragraphs as things of interest the party might investigate, etc. It’s a good format. The initial text descriptions do get a little long at times, in about seven sentences or so for some of them. I’m not a big fan of that, and think that certain rooms, like the Animatorium, for example, could have been better/more terse described in the initial description with more in the follow ups. “Fleshy blob” descriptions with follow ups instead of detailed fleshy blob descriptions. But, whatever, it could be worse. 

Interactivity is good, although a little one note in places. Chains to swing on and things to jump to. Slime to eat, machines to play with … and a few too many levers to pull and helmets to try on. Seriously, it’s a theme. And not enough to be farcical 

The fucking thing is also HARD. In one place there’s a 25% chance per minute of a 15HD monster getting you. And the main slime baddies are ROUGH, even though its unlikely the patry will meet them. Most creatures, though, are one and two HD creatures and there are rooms just primed for the ye old fireball to go off. 

There’s some decent writing throughout, like “A fetid and rotting corpse lies in the mud. Its body is a twisted mass of odd limbs, bumps, warty growths and misplaced” or a mottles purple cone-shaped blob with dripping pink slime”, as a monster description. Although, admittedly, there is a rather slime forward description style. 🙂 There’s also a kind of sly humor that runs through it. Some slime creatures on treadmills are motivated by an illusion of “ a female tread

servitor running away through a field of grass, then seductively turning to look back …” or, a transformation of a party members head, giving them a snout and a ranged attack like te slime zombies have from it. Which expels the PC’s brain from the snout, killing them .. .but probably stunning the creature that the brain hits in the face. 🙂

There’s some repetition here, quite a bit where the shaft and teleports are concerned. And, to little effect, I was still confused about the shaft, or, perhaps, it wasn’t immediately clear until I read more. 

So, pretty nice little dungeon. The central shaft element gives is a good twist, and the slime theme is a good one. This, and that Finch adventure, Spire of Iron and Crystal, could be kissing cousins. It’s a unique environment, good for a Fantastic Place for the party to adventure to.

This is $7.50 at DriveThru. The preview is twenty pages. Pages fifteen and on show the actual encounter keys. Check them out! So, good preview to determine if you want to buy it; I wish more people did this. Also, the level range could be in the product description rather than on the cover only.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/378555/Bottomless-Pit-of-Zorth?1892600

Posted in Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 17 Comments

The Lair of the Shaggy Beast

Posted on February 14, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Nobboc
OSE/BX

This is a one page dungeon from, it looks like, a book on monsters from folklore. While I don’t normally review one pagers anymore, Nobboc asked and Nobboc is not a git, so, a review it is! I assume the book is about the folklore monsters and they are includin a short adventure for some and/or all of the entries. This is the one for the Velue “the shaggy beast.” 

This is landscape formatted, a one pager. The left colum, maybe ¼ or 1/5th of the page, has the monster description and stats. The rest of the page is taken up by a small map of around eight rooms of a cave complex, it’s lair, and the keys for it as well as a minimal hook and instructions for running the monster.

The map is a pretty good one, for its size. Essentially two paths running parallel to each other, as a cave system. The effect is a long snarky path, essentially one hallway running to chambers. I’d normall call this liner, except for the cave features throughout, like the overpasses, underpasses, rivers, and the other parallel tunnel system. Things are made more interesting by making one of the paths too small for the Velue to fit in to. Hit & run tactics then become available … which may in and of itself be a problem for the DM. There’s also a short system to determine if the Velue is at home in its lair and where it is, as well as a way for it to flood certain parts of the system using its water control powers. Overall, it does a lot in a small space with the map and its features.It’s a good cave system with the vertical represented.

The descriptions are terse, as one would expect in a one pager, and relatively evocative. “Pebble beach by a river” is the first location … notice how the room title adds additional context to the encounter. We’ve already got a brief description that “1” alone just doesn’t convey. On top of that there’s “a pestilent small forming from inside the cave.” Great! We’ve got a little bit of foreshadowing, a little bit of a hint that something lives here, and little bit of the mythic underworld, if played that way, implying things are about to get weird. The second line is a strange crow on a rock that says “She’ll give me your eyes! Before flying off. Nice scene, but, “strange” is a poor word choice. HOW is it strange? Strange is a conclusion, you see. You want the description to convey to the players “oh, thats strange”, not tell them its strange. 

I know it’s a one pager, and sospace is limited, but this whole “give me your eyes” thing could have been touched on again via a callback. It’s the only time it’s mentioned.

Room two is a stinky cavern. I’d prefer a sulferous cavern, or something to convey the smell of death, as the room title, since the caracasses of many rotting creatures lie within. There’s rando cave paintings showing men coming down from flying ship. A “very old” cave painting. A better word could have been found for this, and the cave painting has no impact on the adventure. I would have liked to see it contribute. There IS a dead gnome body in a crack … wearing a ring of invisibility. Nice way to hide treasure; I approve!

Room three is a foggy cave, with a knee high mist hiding a troll in a pit … the mist coming from a hot spring in the bottom of the pit. Interesting. I like the trap/trick aspect of the room, as well as “knee high” to describe the mist. Maybe one more line about the troll and how he interacts? The rooms continue like this, generally some interactivity with some decent writing that could be better. The treasure is book, but it’s also one page.

So, it’s a decent little adventure that suffers from all of the usual problems of one-pagers: its too constrained. I can see how a little lair dungeon would buff up the monster entries in a folklore book, but … I’m not sure that the mythic nature, or even the specific aspects of folklore, are captured in the entry. The usual issues, it’s too constrained. I don’t think you need to go all 100 Bushels of Rye on the thing, but, there must be a happy medium here. It’s about as good as you can do, in a one page format for a lair, but … in a one page format. 

Nobboc posted this over ath reddit in the OSR group, so, it’s free:

New creature and mini dungeon for OSE B/X
byu/Nobboc inosr
Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 8 Comments

The Thedron Barrows

Posted on February 12, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Tad Davis
Ars Phantasia Blog
Generic/Universal
Level ... 4?

Cresting the northern peaks of the Thildish Highlands is a series of Barrows, forever enshrouded in mist. Entombed within lie the remains of the Magearchs of Thedron, great sorcerers of a bygone age. For decades after its discovery the barrows served as one of Thild’s hottest adventuring destinations. Songs are still sung of the riches of the mage lords. What’s more, scholars and sages agree that Thedron was home to one of the great lost Demon-swords of old. Interest in the Barrows, however, declined sharply after surrounding townships were hit with a plague of ghoul fever that transformed the citizenry into undead cannibals. Of late the Barrows have become a place of interest for diabolists seeking to unearth forbidden knowledge, as well as a troupe of bandits hiding from the law. Yet the lure of untold wealth and relics continues to draw the occasional stalwart adventuring party to this hilltop necropolis.

This 32 page adventure features a two level “barrows” dungeon full of undead with about a hundred and twenty rooms. It’s trying to present an interesting, dynamic environment that is easy to use. It comes off as a slightly generic “undead tomb” adventure … with lower interactivity. Still, I get what they are going for.

Let’s say something not nice about this adventure! It FEELS like someones first attempt at writing an adventure. And I don’t mean that from a “the first time I played D&D” kind of viewpoint, but, rather, from a “first time trying to write an adventure for someone else to use.” There’s an inkling of knowing what to do, but other areas in which things are just not considered. There are assumptions that are made, by a designer, that they don’t even know they are making. You KNOW what x, y, and z means. It’s implicit in your understanding. And, yet, passing this along to someone else, they get to figure out what you meant. Which, it turns out, is not so obvious. Ideally your editor points this out to you and/or fixes it. 

We’ve got a barrow complex here, a mini barrowmaze. A field full of barrows, a two level map with  a bunch of barrows, a bunch of sarcophagus in those barrows. A bunch of undead in those sarcophagus. Some cultists running around. Some bandits, a goblin tribe. And things assumed. 

The map, I guess, is a good starting point. There are just rooms hanging out on the map. A room surrounded  by rock with a door leading to rock. What’s up with that? As near as I can tell these are meant to represent some of the barrows on the map that are “small” barrows. IE: the barrowfield map show a number of barrows, one of which is numbered to represent the entrance to the greater dungeon, and, I guess, the other barrows might correspond to the entrances to these “disconnected” rooms? So, you look at the barrowfield map and the partygoes in to one of these unnumbered barrows and then you flip to the dungeon level one page and try to match this up to the numbered room on level one. Or, you could just number the barrows in the field? Likewise the stairs. There are a decent number. Again, I think these are supposed to match up, vertically? Why not just number them or make a reference to where the come out at  And, the main entrance to the main barrow dungeon. I don’t see a door? It’s written as “The Great Barrow Interiour” and that description makes it seem like it is the first room the party will encounter. But, there’s no passage to the surface, or obvious doorway to the outside? And the “wilderness” key for the great barrow doesn’t mention anything obvious, like, a hole in the ceiling or some such. 

And then there’s the vibe of the place. Dead. I don’t know why but this has been grating on me for a few years now. Tomb dungeons just seem … boring? I get it, we’re tomb raiders! Yeah! Exploring the crypts! But, it’s got a lot of Stoic Dwarven Temple issues … that can just not be an inherently fun environment. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. But, combined with a low treasure and low magic world … it feels a lot like real world barrow exploring .. if they were this large. 

It’s not impossible to create a dynamic and interactive environment in a tomb, but, the environment, I would argue, does not inherently lend itself to these situations. You get traps. You get frescoes. You get The Tomb of Horrors. You get caskets to open. It all feels very static. And, that’s the way this adventure feels, in spite of the various factions running around inside of it. Because they don’t FEEL like they are running around inside of it or that they are lending themselves to a dynamic environment. They feel staid. Ossified, maybe?

The formatting here is explicitly influenced by Courtney and the generic to specific style. You get some italics up front (blech! No long sections of italics please! They are hard to read!) with a kind of general room description, and then bolded sections underneath describing the various things of interest that the party might then want to investigate. Great in principal; it’s one of my favorite formats and it’s also easy to describe and a n00b to get in to. 

So … should the trap come first? I mean, if there’s a fresco on the wall, should the Frescoe come first or should the trap, thats mentioned in the fresco description, come first? You want the room format to continue the theme of delivering what the DM is likely to need first, first. 

Should things in descriptions ever say “appears to be?” 

Should the entirety of the room description be “A small alcover is hidden by a thin wall behind the idol?” How about The Lich? Should the lich entry say something like “it has the name of the lich on it.” but never ever refer to the name of the lich? SHould the small idol not have a value but the jewels for its eyes have a monetary value? I mean, i think it’s a VERY small idol, stealable? Or maybe it’s not? 

How about the monsters? Should they NOT appear in the room description? Should you just toss in “Creature: 6 ghouls” in to the DM section of the description? 

It’s disconnected. Almost clinical in its coldness. There’s no joy. It feels generic and/or abstracted. Rocks are “large”. The wilderness encounters, for two trolls that are a major menace, says only “the trolls dwell in a cave in the center of the grove. The wilderness map that is lettered one through five while the entries in the keyed section are A through E. 

The end result, from the adventure type, the descriptive type, the lack of dynamics coming through, is boring. 

119. The Open Grave

The beginnings of a long fresco has been painted along the eastern wall. The floor is littered with bones.

Creatures – Shriven, Skeletal Champion

Fresco – a layer of background colors has been painted on the wall. The ghostly dark brown shadows of several human figures have been added, though not detailed. The fresco remains unfinished.

Gate Keys –in addition to the treasure carried by each of the undead, two egg shaped pearlescent orbs are in the pockets of the shriven. One glows a faintly azure color and the other glows aureloin.

What treasure the undead carry? What are they doing? Are they in the rubble? Standing in the middle of the room? I don’t need to be spoon-fed, but, the vibe here is disconnected.

This is free at the designers Ars Phantasia blog. And, yes, I did upload a random Barrow photo for the cover …. 😉

The Thedron Barrows
Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 4 Comments

The Hoard

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Luke Gygax & Christopher Clark
Gaxx Works
1e
Levels 11-13

You hear tales at the inn of a vast dragon’s hoard that may no longer be guarded. A well-dressed and highly persuasive Ranger even agrees to show you the way to this vaunted treasure, and help you secure it, if she might lay claim to a single dagger from the loot. What a great opportunity! Why do you feel its too good to be true?

This 45 page adventure describes a dungeon with about thirty rooms, featuring a really dumb Mammon scheme. It’s essentially a long list of set-pieces … or what passes for set pieces in 1e. Each room is about a page or longer because Luke/Christopher and/or the editors seem to think that’s what people want. A long conversational style. I don’t want that. I just want to play D&D tonight. I’m guessing most people are in my same position.

There are a few clues that something will not be good when you pick up an adventure. I’ve talked about page count before, the ratio of the number of pages to number of encounters. Or, the fact that something is written for Mork Borg. Another clue is Names From The Olden Days. While it’s not always a given that these clues will mean a bad adventure, there are trends in that area. I try to look at everything with fresh eyes, which is one of the reasons I’m frequently disappointed. 

But man, it’s hard when you come across something like this. It turns out it’s a tournament adventure, and, I make allowances for tourney adventures. To a certain extent. It’s frequent, in my experiences running at cons, at tourney adventures are dumped in a DMs lap at the last minute, making ease of use more of an issue than most. The Gygax name sells, though, as does, I assume the Clark name. This adventure is essentially a set of 1e set pieces, or what passes for a set piece in 1e. Each room a puzzle. Each room a bit overloaded with a gimmick. This is not in and of itself an issue; The Tower of Gax at GenCon is one of my favorite things to play in and they are essentially the same thing. Each room a kind of weird puzzle, of sorts. Or, maybe, rooms that look straightforward but you have to beware because something is lurking for the inattentive.

We start this adventure is a LONG piece of fiction, always a good sign tha the designers attention is in the right place instead of, say, paying attention to the experience the DM will be having running the room. There is A LOT of backstory in this. The principals all get a long couple of columns of their history. This includes, for a dragon, the line “This trauma of childhood has made her bitter and vengeful.” Well, fucking great. It’s fucking dragon. Stab stab stab. That’s the backstory you need. Even when, in this case, the dragon is LE and goes along with tha party in each room, turning invisible in most combats, hanging back and, of course, inevitably betraying the party. Gee, didn’t see that coming. The pretext is tha ta dragon has sold its soul to Mammon and is going in to the dungeon to get it back, with the parties assistance, as a poly’d elf who hires the party. But, whatever. To the adventures credit it doesn’t gimp the parties spells … or offer any advice on what to do when they cast detect alignment on the elf and see it’s LE. The betrayal is just a “i turn back in to a dragon and flee the dungeon”, so, it’s not as bad as most.

The individual set pieces in this, which essentially means every room, are good. They are interesting and varied, if a little pushing the sense of disbelief. Each room has something a little special to upset the applecart of “i stab it in a straightforward manner.” None of them feel like outright gimps, it’s more “the quicksand has a shell over the top of it that will support one persons weight so it’s not obvious.”

You’ve got to fight through a lot of read-aloud, as one would expect from designers of this generation, as well as a conversational style of presenting the rooms that one would also expect from this generation. Almost no consideration is given to actually RUNNING the adventure at the table; the core conceit of this blog. It doesn’t matter how good the adventure is, if it’s a pain to run then my eyes are gonna glaze over and I’m not going to put the fucking effort in, in 2022. I’m going to pick an adventure that is at least as good and is far FAR easier to run. I’m not reading and rereading, highlighting and taking notes for each room. Not when the fucking dedigners and editors didn’t put any effort in to make it easier to run.

It’s FULL of conversational bullshit mucking up the text. Which is great if you are only reading the adventure and no so great if you want to scan it quickly, at the table, to run it. This gem sums up a lot “In any event, the manticores take their jobs seriously, and will attack. Within their nest these manticores keep hidden several gems given to them by Mammon for outstanding work:” These words have absolutely no impact on running the adventure, and yet get the way of scanning the text following it and around it. No attempt is made at any formatting other than an occasional paragraph break. At this point I think the Mork Borg crew should exclusively be involved in idea generation and fmatting and layout and the old crew of designers should be involved in the design of the adventure encounters and making things work together. Both groups seem to have a fatal flaw in seeing the utility the other group brings. 

There’s a gimp or two in this, but they are not serious. One door, in particular, stands out. You can only lockpick to get in t othe room easily/quietly. If you KNOCK it then the door opens, and then falls of its hinges making a loud sound on the floor. With no advance warning.

Which is weird because the rooms otherwise do a decent job of telegraphing whats to come, to people who are paying attention. A read-aloud, in room one, mentions a greta pile of sticks and logs in front of a door … which are actually sleeping manticores. It also mentioned a musty smell, another clue, and a sandy floor, made up of fine sand, which also gives a clue to whats to come with the quicksand. These are clues for the players to ask more questions, which is what a good read-aloud should be doing. The RA also mentioned the large clusters of tall mushrooms in the rooms, which should set off some player caution as well, telegraphing the shriekers. The PAGE of text to follow up on this RA is the issue, with no clue as to what is what is in which paragraph to come to allow the DM to quickly reference them when the players follow up. I’m not holding a page of text in my head, much less scan is quickly or pause the game for five minutes while I read and grok the room. 

This does, though, reveal the set piecey nature of the 1e rooms. Obvious mushrooms to set off warning bells. Logs/sticks that are something else. And the looming threat of the quicskand for those that are paying attention. Not just a shrieker fight, or a manticore fight. This can go overboard in some rooms, with Monster Zoo 4e enocnters, where Lurkers drop down on the party in the middle of an otherwise “normal” encounter. I don’t do rando monsters working together.

The Mammon theme here isn’t the strongest, but it is well done, with things being telegraphed in most of the encounters that someone is making bargains somewhere. Combined with some bargains being offered by Mammon, in near-death cases, it comes across pretty well. I’m happy to see a devil acting like a devil, even if he’s not the star in this … or even shows up in a meaningful way. 

I’m trying to be nice here. The rooms are pretty good and it’s a decent high -level adventure that doesn’t gimp you. But, the complete lackof making it easier to run, along with the length and complexity of the rooms, makes this one I would skip. Just fucking highlight a few word with bolding or something and cut the bullshit pay per word text padding and you’d have a decent 1e adventure. 

But that didn’t happen.

This is $20 at DriveThru. That’s a little fucking steep. I mean, not if it were good, but for this? And the preview just shows the fiction and the NPC motivation pages. PAGES. The preview needed to show a room or two tl let the DM know if they want to fight through the text to run it.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/378245/The-Hoard?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 53 Comments

The Serpent Cult

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
Sebastian Grabne
Dawnfist Games
Generic
Level 1

We’re doing something different today. Here’s a lin to the preview of the adventure. Go to the last page. That’s the town description. That’s the ENTIRE description. ALL of the locations in the adventure are described in this format with the same tone, tenor, descriptive style. Or lack thereof. SO, loko at he preview page. Then try to review it. You’ll do a better job than I did.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/384870/The-Serpent-Cult?1892600

The adventure takes place on The Windswept Coast, where a newly formed cult has awakened a sleeping hydra which has wreaked havoc along the coast, creating trouble for the peaceful fishing village of Haven. The adventurers are now tasked with making the coast safe again.

This fifteen page digest  adventure describes an eight room dungeon. It does the BARE minimum, creating a work that is notable only for its blandness.Generic Adventure number 187,482,456.

Digest adventure. Fifteen pages. Pretty short then, right? With GIANT font’s and large margins and lots of whitespace. Which means even less text. Frankly, I’m surprised that there’s as much content as their is, given the formatting and layout choices. So, good job I guess?

You get four wilderness location. That’s a lot, so, two of the locations are numbered the same: C, even though there’s a D on the map. Seriously? You only had FOUR LOCATIONS and you fucked up labeling one of them? Ok, so, anyway. You get the twon. You get a shipwreck site on the coast. You get “The old Altar” and you get a spider cave. The town contains such exciting locales as The Tavern: “Warm and inviting tavern, visited by everyone in Haven on a regular basis” Soooo…. It’s a fantasy tavern. And everything in this adventure is going to fall in the same descriptive style. The docks in town are described as “Three fishing boats lay docked at

the southern pier. The northern pier is rotten and not in use.“ That’s it. Nothing else. A completely useless waste of words. A kind of aggressive genericism. Out front of the tavern is an elf selling blue eggs. They are supposed to be hydra eggs. He picked them up on the shore of the coast. This is absolutely meaningless and contributes nothing to the adventure. It has no meaning at all. I guess, not everything has to, though, right? But in an adventure with such few locations and an aggressive genericism, I would expect a little more? 

The dungeon, one of the four locations, has eight rooms. It contains such descriptions as “A large stone hall with door in all four directions and a burning brazier in the southwestern corner.” The rest of the description tells you where each of the four doors goes. Like “The east door goes to room 7” the prayer room.” The same information contained on the map. The main baddie rooms essentially says “there are 20 cultists and their leader in this room.” and nothing else. The most interesting description in the entire thing, by a longshot, is “A hallway knee-deep in murky water.” Knee-deep. Murky. Those are good.

Clearly, I just do not have it the fuck in me tonight. The absolute lack of any type of content in this is depressing. The way a simple one page (half page?) adventure is dragged out in to fifteen pages. The lack of ANYTHING going on at all in the adventure. There’s a room with a hydra in it. That’s it. And that’s about the extent of the hydra room description. 

Why?

Why does this exist?

Why do I bother?

I mean, maybe I should justsee how many crayons I can shove up my nose? That would be more useful then this adventure or me reviewing this adventure. 

THERE”S NOTHING HERE!!!!!

It’s essentially just a hollow shell of an adventure. 

I could say something like “Maybe there’s an elf here or something” and it would be about as useful as the content delivered in this.

It’s $2 at Drivethru. The preview is four pages. I invite you to examine the last page of the preview, the town description. This tells you everything you need to know about the adventure. This IS the town description. There is nothing more. ALL of the descriptions, encounters, etc in the adventure are just like this. In fact, my entire review should just be this page. Hmmm, I’m gonna go do that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/384870/The-Serpent-Cult?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 9 Comments

Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier

Posted on February 5, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Gus L.
Ratking Productions
OSE
Level 1

Welcome to the Crystal Frontier, a desolate magic stained wasteland where fabulous crystal spires and fortresses plummet from the skies to tempt the desperate and the bold with magical gems and golden treasures. Find your fortune or find your death as you plunder the fallen sky tomb of an Empyrean despot. SCHEME with the unnatural denizens of the Crystal Tomb! UNRAVEL the secrets of the Dead King and his realm of misrule! LOOT strange magics and opulent treasures from beyond the sky’s vault!

This 61 page digest sized adventure presents a “classic” dungeon crawl with about eighteen rooms in about as many pages, along with associated murder-hobo town. It oozes with the Gus L flavour, is well laid out and edited … albeit pushing the boundaries of what can be done with the selected style, and is full of interesting situations. A classic dungeon-crawl of the best sort … with a little weird world of crystals thrown in.

Normally I’d cover what’s good about an adventure and then rip it apart. Normally, adventures are bad. But this isn’t a bad adventure. So, instead, I’m going to cover first what could be improved and then go on to fanboy’ing over what’s good.

So … the map. It’s a good map. Don’t get me wrong. It’s got some elevation changes. Some terrain features. A few alternative paths. It’s pretty clear and evocative and matches the vibe of the adventure well. Little map sections are also included in the adventure for reference during play. IE: this is the picture of the room you are currently in. But, in addition to the “main” map there is also an isometric map. Isometric maps generally excel in showing elevation changes. And that it does! You can see room features like ledges and cliffs very well. It fails, I think, in some of the corridor elevation changes. Or, maybe, doesn’t match what the text of the adventure says? It’s a minor thing.

Second, the adventure setting. The land of Gus is full of crystals. It makes sense in the context of the world, but that world is not one of high fantasy or even middle fantasy. Grewhawk and Forgotten Realms players will be out of their element. Unless you run an exclusively Red Wizards game. This tends much closer to something like the world of ASE1, a world in which the wizards are in charge and they are fucking brutal. It’s not quite gonzo, but, The Warlock King of the Bull Kingdom is the land next door and people get diseases that cause them to grow crystals out of their body. I think it kicks ass and would fit in to my default game world style. But Greyhawk it ain’t. 

Finally, the format and/or layout. It’s good. It’s VERY good. It’s using a great general format, providing a brief room overview of a few sentences and bolding a few of the keywords in that overview, that then get their own sections of follow up information that is easy to scan. Rooms generally get between half a page (digest sized) to two pages, depending on complexity. The longest sections tend to be about about a quarter of a column. What’s he managed to do here is pack a tremendous amount of information in to a very little amount of space .ALMOST too much. It’s not too much. But man, you look aat it and you’re like “this is a lot.” and then you go through it, and, because of his job in editing and formatting, it’s not. You can locate and scan information quite easily. I don’t know, though, how much farther this can be taken. If this were a much longer dungeon would I still feel the same way? Or, if the rooms were even more packed can the same sofmratting hold up? I don’t know. So, yes, my bitch is that it’s MAYBE not future proof and triggers my past adventure review trauma when glancing at it before actually looking at it. 😉

Gus knows what he fuck he is doing, and this is oriented towards a new DM. Or, perhaps, a Dm not accustomed to the OSR play style. He offers advice both up front and in the rooms, as sidebars, on how to handle things. 

One room, a large cavern ,has, like, 500 bodies in it that animate when disturbed, as zombies. “Ah!” i thought “A puzzle room!” and indeed Gis then has a nice little sidebar pointing out that this is NOT a combat encounter and how to run it not as one. Also, uh, room with 500 zombies in it! Kick ass!

We’re got factions in the dungeon. There are some interesting puzzles, both literally, as is generally found in tombs, and figuratively, like the zombie room. Crystal Dustremains an environmental danger in many rooms. There are “people” to talk to and Gus makes explicit the ration table in many encounters, reminding the DM to use them by noting how they react. 

I’m going to cite some descriptions from the nearby shithole town he describes, as examples of How To Do Things.

The town is described as “A town filled with vileness, its very atmosphere impregnated with the odour of abomination; murder runs riot, drunkenness the rule, gambling a universal pastime, fighting recreation.” Now that’s the kind of frontier town I like! A deadwood after my own heart. One of the gangs is called Bug Tunny and the DeadHeart Boys. Not bandits. Not brigands. No. Big Tunny and his DeadHeart Boys. THAT’S how you refer to something in an adventure. That’s the kind of specificity that adds so much to an adventure. The kind that “brigand gang” can never duplicate. Also,The  League of Saloonkeepers and Madams for the Common Defense. The fucking name REEKS of the situation in town and you could write an entire based around that name alone because of all that is implied in t! Fuck! Yeah! And he’s got a whole LONG table of situations that could be going on in town. It takes up so little space and adds so much. Rot-Root the lotus dealer is out of stock. He’s waiting on a huge shipment from Aurum Ferro any

day now. The addicts are restless. The market is poised to be upturned by a cunning entrepreneur, or a skilled hijacker. Uh huh. That’s got so much in it!

He does a great job with supplemental information, even providing a tracking sheet, ala Melan, for the DM to track time and the like on. There’s a possession table that is out of this world. Realistic, makes sense, not too punishing but still make syou wish you weren’t possessed. It’s little details, that, over and over again, build on themselves to deliver an impact much larger than the mere word count would imply. 

I leave you with the description of one of the rooms:

Accessible only via a long crawl down a 3’ square corridor. The cold, damp passage descends before finally opening into the room near its ceiling. From the passage is a 10’ drop into the blackwater that partially floods the room—a stark contrast to the milky-white crystal of its walls. At the center of the room is a glass pillar, rising 4’ from the water and topped by a sittingfigure in rotting gold brocade robes. Apricot-sized orbs of fire orbit the figure’s head.

Note tha the first two sentences are you need immediately, the room before the room, so to speak. You scan them, run them, and move on. That leaves three sentences left for the DM to scan. We get the drop, the blackwater flood, the most obvious things, first, with the walls a close second and the then the piller and sitting figure. The order you need things in. A long crawl down. A 3’ square. Both evocative. Blackwater partially flodding The contrast to the milfy white crystal walls. A GLASS pillar. ROTTING gold robes. Orbs or fire. ORBITIING instead of circling .Note the word choices and how they work together. Good Job.

This is $7.50 at DriveThru.The preview is 30 pages. More than enough to get a sense of the world and the dungeon and the formatting and layout style and determine if its a fit for you. Good job!


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/357799/Tomb-Robbers-of-the-Crystal-Frontier?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 36 Comments

Trouble Came to Blackwood

Posted on February 2, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By S.E. Bischoff
Self Published
Zweihander
"Basic Tier Characters"

A beast from ages past plagues the village of Blackwood, hunting the population under the light of the full moon. For the last six months, many have tried and failed to stop the monster, but every attempt has met with death. Desperate for salvation, the villagers of Blackwood have concluded that what this beast wants, and the only thing that will save those still alive, is a sacrifice conducted by the beast’s very own worshipers. As luck would have it, the arrival of the PCs has provided a fresh supply of sacrificial lambs.

This seven page adventure details the usual “village cult captures the party” scenario. I’m using “details” mildly. There are good things that the adventure does, but it suffers from the usual inability to transfer information to the DM well, as well as setting up what I think is a no-win situation. More help for the DM in that area could have been done. Still, it ALMOST get the level of details right for a village/cult sandbox. 

I didn’t notice this was seven pages when I bought it. That’s enough for an OSR adventure, but not enough for a “two session” adventure for a non-OSR game. I mean, it SHOULD be, but nothing published ever works out that way for a non-OSR game. Still, I was moderately hopeful at the start after seeing the NPC section.

This is the usual thing for a cult village scenario. Party arrive sin village. Village cult kidnaps party, hold them for a bit, then ties them up in the center of the village for The Beast to come eat them, as a sacrifice. It’s been done a bunch. Has it ever been done well? Meh. Is it done well in this? No. It’s not terrible, but it’s no where near good either.

It’s got a few things going for it. There are more than a few relatable situations in this. The inn owner, with kids, who just wants to be left alone so the rest of the villagers go pick someone else other than her family. The zealot priest, complete with gun in hollowed out bible, leading the villagers. The peasant mob, led by some hotheads. A broken down palisade, with destroyed house, from a previous attack. A hunter, maybe on the parties side, with four hunting dogs … two untrained. You just KNOW how that’s going to go, right? A village meeting in the church, with the party not let in to it. You can kind of piece things together from this. The very relatable NPC’s, with their motivations and archetypes, and the trophy little scenes, like the destroyed house/pallisade and village meeting in the church. 

But it’s not nearly enough. There are minor things and bigger things.

The NPC”s, while having relatable motivations, are not done in such a way as to make them usable by the DM easily. You need to read an entire paragraph and pick apart people they know, quirks, and motivations, scattered about in them. The village is supposed to have a “center” where the sacrifices are made, but its not obvious at all from the map what that is. In fact, I’d say the ,ap is more than useless. It’s basically just some squares representing houses, along a river. There’s nothing about it that would facilitate the adventure. The “palisade” around the village is only shown on one side … what about the other sides of the village? There’s an island in the middle of the village, with houses on it, and no way to reach it? That’s never mentioned? Nothing on the map makes sense, even for a map that would be more evocative/arty than true mappy reference. The hooks and rumors are all just lame throw-aways, but, nothing new there, right? The “beast” doesn’t really get a good description. Oh, it gets one, I guess? In a long paragraph at the end of the book n the new monsters section, where you would expect it. But the actual physical description is scattered throughout the paragraph. Like, line of description, line of BS, line of description, line of BS, and so on. Monsters descriptions should be up front, the lead thing, in a monster entry. That’s almost always the first thing the DM needs to know about the creature, so make it first in the entry and puti it all together. This is all part of the “making it easy for the DM to run/scan the adventure and use it philosophy. And you get three corruption for killing the leader of the mob?

A timeline embedded in the church entry. The location descriptions for he village are about the right size … except when they are not … like there are no clues in the ransacked house or palisade.

But, really, the adventure is short and weighted towards the village, which might be realistic but not fun. I’m not sure how this is supposed to go. The mob comes after the party. The party runs off?  The mob chases and then the adventure is over, maybe? Or, the party is captured and held? Then there’s no guidance on for the DM on holding a jail break and making that fun. There’s just “you’re taken to the village center and tied up” for the beast to come and eat you at night. Gee, that’s fun. There’s no “chaos as the party escape when the beasteats the villagers instead of the party” or anything else to help the DM handle the breakout, the beast attack, the party escaping, or being given a fighting chance. I don’t see how the beast showing up ever happens as a gameable moment. The party either runs off when trying to be captured, or are captured and sacrificed … in which case the DM monologs the party death. If they escape they run off again, right? Or they kill everyone? But, and this is my point, there is no scenario in which they are tied up as sacrifices in which the beast showing up is anything but a monologue.And, the party is meant to be captured, like, two days before the beast shows up? That’s a ong time. And a long time to be captured. It seems like a prison break is in order … but it is completely unsupported. It’s this lack of support for what should LOGICALLY happen, either the breakout or the sacrifice … and even support for the mob capturing the party. More village vignettes up to the start would be cool also. There IS support for tracking the beast back to its lair, but, again, I don’t see how that happens given the timeline, unless you have a very aggressively do-gooder party.

This is $1 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. How can I know what I’m buying without a preview?


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/363572/Trouble-Came-to-Blackwood?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 7 Comments

The Halls of Light

Posted on January 31, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ivan Richmond
Self Published
OSR
Level 1

The gnomes of Rockswald have asked for your help.  They operate a mithrl mine, but it has recently been invaded by goblins.  They will reward anyone who can rid them of the goblins.

This twenty page adventure features a mine/dungeon with about fifteen rooms or so. I have had a strange relationship with my own mortality since my early twenties. This adventure helped me resolve that. By making me wish I was dead so the pain would finally be over. If dude isn’t going to try then neither am I.

So, the entrance to the dungeon has a small tunnel you have to crawl through and centipedes and beetles crawl on the party and they have to push aside cobwebs. That’s pretty cool! It’s not something most adventures deal with, but, the mundanity of the situation and the notes of visceral realness add a lot to the entrance. It’s the kind of thing I wish more adventures would do, imagine the scene in terms of real life, the messiness of it all. And I don’t mean cobwebs, but the messiness of thescene laid out before you. Shadows flickering. Wet. Guano. And even centipedes and cobwebs. Imagine every time you’ve anted to crawl in somewhere and the environment and how it made you feel. I love that this does that. 

It also has a second entrance to the dungeon, a stream that you can follow in and two hidden rooms that can only be found by going up the stream. I love that off the beaten path kind of stuff. It rewards the players who think outside of the box. It’s also got a weird pacing to it, where you explore the upper caves, find a gnome village beyond them, and then explore the gnome mines, killing goblins in them. Kind of a pre-journey, just to get to the main adventure. Again, I like the realism of that.

But, those are all conceptual things I like.

In reality you get exciting room descriptions like “They enter a cavern full of stalactites, stalagmites, flow stones, and columns. Tunnels lead off in various directions.” or something like “It is full of giant quartz crystals.” That is seriously a room description. I get it, yes, but, maybe include a few more words to make tha scene come alive? Write something evocative? One of my favorite rooms is “This cave complex contains the lair of the West Goblin tribe.” Come on. This is nothing but facts. Regale me with descriptions! Throw in some things! These are the yellow cap goblins, right? The cave should be the lair of hte yellow cap tribe, for example. Describe whats going on. The noise. The smoke from the fires? The goblins from the other tribe roasting on a spit? Something? Anything?

Instead we such compelling content as “The New Mines

If they go right from the Gnome Village, it will bypass the Mithrl Vats, since they can’t get there

that direction, but allow access to the Mithrl Refinery. If they go right from there, instead, it

will take them to the east entrance to the Halls of Light (left) or back to the Gnome Village (right).” … The exact same thing that is shown on the map. 

This is my life.

Hey, who wats a magic sword! You can get one in the dungeon. It is a magic sword! That’s all you get. Nothing more. “Magic sword.”  I am inspired.

And yet …

The gnomes made a gazebo out of mithral. If you go in then it begins to spin and  turns in to one of those carnival rides. It forces the party up against the razor sharp crystal walls. And a buzzsaw comes out. Ok, sure. That’s something that the gnomes make. … And put in the mine portion of the mine. 

You get a suit of mithral chain mail that a wizard can wear and still cast spells if you clean out the goblins. 

Yeah, D&D!

Mamma said there’d be days like this.

I don’t want to shit one someone. Seriously, I don’t. But ,come on! You gotta make a fucking effort! You’ve seen an adventure before, right? It gets the coveted 2 out of 10 rating.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages. Try page five on for size. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/383744/The-Halls-of-Light?1892600

Posted in 2 out of 10, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 6 Comments

Deadly Waters

Posted on January 29, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Adventure Bundles
Self Published
5e
Level 4

Halenshire is a small town built in and around natural springs. Since about 1 month there has been a mysterious disease spreading among the population. Some people only experience fatigue and vomiting, while some other unlucky ones even die. The people are afraid, mainly because it appears to be spreading randomly. There have been cases of people from same households getting infected, and others where only 1 family member got it and died. In other words, it is a mystery. Is it a curse? A sign from the gods? A sinister act? No one knows thus far. Some other stories say that the dead had been drained of blood, others that the local cleric is sinister. To make matters worse, some of the dead bodies seem to disappear during the night. Suspects exist plenty, especially in a town as Halenshire which sees a steady influx of visitors. The local Cleric is new in town and has been acting strange and overzealous, there is talk about the tavern being in the middle of things, and the traveling circus which arrived at the city almost at the same time as the first infection appeared. The party will have to investigate as many possible suspects to get to.

This 24 page adventure details an investigation in to plague deaths in a town. Conceptually, it’s a decent investigation and does good things in that area. As implemented though, it’s far too wordy and hard to follow, in spite of efforts to the contrary. It also is one note, with deviations from the investigation being noticeably gamey.

At this point I’m doing 5e adventures essentially by request only, and this was a request by the designer. We are a kind and generous blog, and are known for that, so, I’m brook no disagreement you fuckers!

The standard 5e format is to go to a town, find something wrong going on, investigate some, and then go to a lair to kill something. This follows that format, yet, the … depth? Of the investigation makes it more than that, almost to the point of a mystery. Mysteries are VERY hard to pull off in D&D, cause Spells, but this one demonstrates a way it might make sense … which is tending more towards investigation.

You’ve got a town and people in the town are dying from a disease. Plague isn’t being thrown around, but, I like to think of it that way. I don’t think the designer frames it that way either and the adventure would have been better, I think, if the adventure was more angled towards “town in the midst of a plague” rather than just a disease. This sort of framing issue will happen more than few times in the adventure. The elements come across gamey instead of real-world, and real-world would have more visceralness to the adventure. More on that later. 

You come to town and get hired to look in to things. That’s lame. It’s the usual “this is bad for business, go figure out happened” hooks. Hiring the party, as troubleshooters, is usually the worst kind of hook, and its the fact here as well. Some tie in to the plague (and framing it as a black death kind of thing) would have gone better. You go questions people, follow up leads, and have a final boss battle in the cistern of a bathhouse … that is pretty damn fucking huge and elaborate for a bathhouse. Like, parisian sewers vaulted ceilings in a room that’s 80×80. We’re pushing the suspension of disbelief here. The towns fairly small. I know WHY, to have the boxx lair fight, but still, maybe a smaller cistern and an attached big cave? 

What makes this adventure interesting if the misdirection. The creature living in the cistern is poisoning the water. A slow kind of diseased death that not everyone gets. It then visits the “dead body storage shack” and drags the bodies back to its lair to eat Cool! The disease takes days, and you die of “exhaustion” or “fatigue.” (You can recognize in this 5e game elements. And while tha might be correct from a rules standpoint, and maybe even from a real life standpoint, I think dehydration/diarrhea/etc would have been a better way to put this to the players, another example of the “disease/plague” framing issue.) Along the way various things pop up. What’s the linkage to the inn? Or the brewery? Why are bodies disappearing from the charnel house? What’s up with the Wrath of God preacher in the temple? And there’s a circus in town. With a snake woman. You can see the misdirection. The priest is a “they must have deserved it/had it coming” kind of guy. That’s usually the go to dude to kill in adventure. But not here. And he takes care of the bodies before the burials … and the bodies go missing. Another vote in just stabbing him. I usually just burn down a circus, first thing, in an adventure. But that’s not the case here. And a snake woman in the circus? Double burn it down! A brewery drugging people? The tropes are all here, but they all have mundane explanations or just “meh, sometimes priests are assholes” explanations. This is great. Expectations subverted! And this sort of subversion happens a lot, but it never feels like a Gotcha! It’s a slow untangling of what’s going on. And that’s why it’s a good investigation.

But it lacks in two critical areas. The first, as mentioned, are the framings it uses. From a disease (yes, sure, technically, ok) to a Plague!!!! And other areas in which the word choices and framings are just a little too clinical. You’re going for a village gripped in fear in an adventure like this. This theme continues with the word choices used by the adventure in relating happenings. So, snake-woman see osgood behind in a back alley by the temple. First, she didn’t see Osgood. She should be relating the physical features of what she saw and the adventure should be helping the DM by providing that to them at the snake-woman interview section. Osgood is a conclusion, one step removed from what the DM needs, Likewise you have a talk at one point, probably, with a guy whose got the disease. Only later in the adventure does it relate that he’s in the middle of a fever. That makes sense! It would be great to have a delirium patient in a fever being questioned! But that’s not how the scene comes across. Again, abstracted and a little clinical. Gamey. You have to lead with the fever thing. And, seeing the creature in the back alley? No, you want the snake woman to leading the party even more to the temple and priest. Make him even more suspicious instead of just tangentially relating that it might have been near the temple. 

It also throws some fights at the party. As in “adventuer must be boring, so lets throw in in some monsters.” In the brewery some nuisance fire elementals show up to cause some havoc, not related to the adventure. This smacks of that terrible advice to start games with a combat to get the party in to things. NO! These come across, again, as gamey. Yes, I agree, the adventure could use a little more in the confrontation department. The priest, or local toughs, or a Plague Watch vigilante group could fill in for this. But just tossing in rando monsters is not a good thing. 

“At the rear of the chapel is an alter to the deity” is not a very good description, and describes, in a nutshell, the abstracted nature, the gamey nature, of the encounters.

Decent ideas, and concept, and design, but way way WAY too wordy, with the threads between locations being a little hard for the DM to sus out, even though they are explicitly mentioned multiple times. This is no doubt because of all the extra words, not related to the actual happenings. 

I’m bored now and am going to do something else.

This is $5 at Drivethru. You get the entire thing in the preview, so ,good preview,


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/364585/Deadly-Waters?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 8 Comments

Monkey Murder Manor

Posted on January 26, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ripley Caldwell
Self Published
Mork Borg
Level 1

Within the Manor is the Pit, a hole in reality that spews out hordes of otherworldly monkeys. The Manor has done its job and killed them, over and over again, for decades upon decades. As the woods darkened and the blood was spilled and the Manor was forgotten, something changed. It grew bitter and hateful, and now the seal has been broken.

This 59 page digest adventure features two levels on dungeon with about 35 rooms. A good format, interesting situations and an evocative writing style help overcome the absurdity of what is essentially a funhouse dungeon. Not the usual Mork Borgian shovelware. Not at all.

The Mork Borgians do NOT have a good reputation at this point. I’m sure, upon seeing “Mork Borg” listed, a great number of my readers, rolled their eyes and said to themselves “Ug! Not again!” Basically, it has devolved in to a system that a large art community has gravitated towards. These folks are moderately interested in interesting layout and art designs and less interested in creating something that can be played. It reminds me for the 3e/3.5e days when loads of shovelware came out. A system so popular and welcoming that it attracts a certain element, that then tends to gain a niche reputation, that then becomes the reputation of the system, leading to less “normal” product and even more niche product. Which, I guess, is fine?  But your eyes then tend to gloss over products for the system because so many are crap. I don’t dislike Mork Borg, I just dislike that SO. FUCKING. MANY. Mork Borg adventures are not actually adventures but just circle jerk wank off art projects. Go sell the fucking thing like that instead of calling it an adventure and I’d be fine. Or, maybe they think they are, since they list as Mork Borg? 

But this adventure ain’t like that. It is, essentially, a real adventure. With a few caveats. I’m going to turn things around and cover those issues up front, and then follow with the positives. Keep in mind though, that the positives are very positive and I’m going to ultimately recommend this adventure. With Dick Cavetts. They came in two basic forms: why the fuck are we doing this and the absurdity of the situation. They both involve the suspension of disbelief and the first, at least, is a common issue with adventures.

Starting with the absurdity seems like the right thing to do. I’m a big fan of the absurd. But I like the absurd specifically because of the hubris involved in the suspension of disbelief. That’s what its toying with, in general, in film, tv, books, and other media types. I’m not sure, though, that the absurdity, and the suspension of disbelief, or lack thereof, that it engenders, works in a D&D environment. Comedy, and that’s what absurdity ultimately is, is a VERY hard thing to pull of fin RPG’s. The best Paranoia adventures don’t go for comedy but simply set up a situation. When Paranoia tries to be silly it fails, and, I think, ultimately led to the failure of the system. I’ve seen this time and again in D&D as well. ASE1 works. It keeps it straight. And then the clowns show up in ASE2 and things fall apart. I don’t believe anymore. It’s not a Bioshock vibe anymore. I don’t give a shit. 

In this adventure we have a kind of hell pit that disgorges evil corrupted things. A wizard builds a house over it to research and help contain things. Then he goes away and we’re left with a manor home on autopilot. Pretty classic trope; wizards do love to build their houses on places of power. But in this case the things being disgorged are monkeys. Look, I’m in TOTAL agreement that monkeys are evil little shits. I think I’ve had three wild encounters with monkeys and they’ve always ended up with me coming away with the impression that monkeys are evil little shits. So, yeah, I’m with you man. But, as an adventure element it strains disbelief. The name, itself, makes me groan and think “Ug! This is gonna be crap …” As a genre, also, I’m not sure were this fits. Not as a modern adventure, or in any genre other than fantasy, I think. But while I’m usually a fan of the mundane as monsters in fantasy, I don’t see this working. I’m not sure why. Maybe people, even me, think monkeys are cute? It’s just that it comes off as an absurd premise. And, yet, I’d also be pretty pissy if it were goblins or some such? Something FEELS off. Maybe it’s just me? I’d be interested in others opinions of this. It both feels like a real issue and a made up issue, so there must be some framing I’m not understanding.

And then there’s the Why The Fuck? Issue. Why is the party doing this? Ultimately, it’s always because we want to have fun tonight and D&D is what we selected to have fun. DO you want to play D&D? Then do the fucking adventure choad. I get it. Just lack week I drank some citronella oil and set my face on fire because I was bored. But, also, it’s another element that leads to issues with suspension of disbelief. With little treasure, we’re left with “be a hero” or “it’s what we’re doing tonight.” I’m not saying this is equivalent to Original Sin, but it’s an issue. Just because A LOT of adventures have the issue means nothing. Yes, the players must find motivation for their characters I get that also But, also, there’s a spectrum here and getting too far on to the “fuck you” side of it is an issue. Give us something to work with. Admitidally, gold=xp does this well, as does rumors of gold in place. And Be a Hero can do this. But, we need things that appeal to the players to get them going. Or, maybe, we don’t need that but when an adventure does it then its smarter than your average bear Boo Boo.

Let’s move on to some good things. Of which there are A METRIC FUCK TUN.

And the first is one of the hooks. I frequently talk about hooks needing just a little more to support the DM. “Caravan guards” is boring as fuck ,but if you dump in something interesting, a nextra sentence or two, then it can no longer be a throw-away hook but something interesting. It’s not longer a waste of word-count. One of the hooks in this is: “A teenage boy (his name was Wemut) is found dismembered in the street, still missing a leg, and a trail of gore leads to an abandoned, moss-covered hut. There, the characters will encounter their first (but certainly not last) monkey, a macaque with too many arms, still gnawing on Wemut’s severed leg. It escapes through the window and leads the…”

That’s a fucking hook! Notice the specificity that brings it to like. Dismembered, Missing a leg. Teenage. In the street, still missing a leg. Moss-covered hut. Too many arms, gnawing a leg. This description paints the fucking picture WELL. It’s not too many words, especially considering tha the DM will be running the entire intro hook from it. What you think, maybe 30 minutes of content, maybe more, in that one brief word count? That’s pretty good density. It’s breezy, moves along, creates an evocative picture of the environments/situations. Very good.

And it does this over and over again with its descriptions. The designer has a talent for describing an evocative situation. Something happening. 

One room has “A wounded, screeching orangutan dragging itself across the room. A grim-faced butler in trim clothing pursuing the orangutan, knife in hand.

If not interrupted, he finishes stabbing the orangutan to death, wipes his knife off with a handkerchief, and blithely addresses the characters.” Uh … fuck yes! That’s an introduction to what’s going on in the manor! Specific. Paints a picture. This comes over and over again and over again. All with a kind of sly black humor. “Participating in impressive monkey violence” can earn the manor homes favor. Nice. 🙂 An NPC party is wanted for crimes of “excessive blasphemy,” A slyness to it. 

Another room has a “A pale wooden box that moves and shudders as if it’s breathing. As soon as a character moves within striking distance, it opens, a mass of spinning saw blades, crossbows, and ropes on twisting articulated limbs. This is interesting because it is both specific AND generic and the genericism itself is leveraged ti create an evocative picture. A mass of spinning saw blades and articulated limb things and crossbows. Your mind races to cartoon like imagery of such things. 

Items can be great also.  Full wine glass, the wine full of gold flakes. A tiny monkey with insect like wings in a jar. Guess what eating it does? It hits time after time after time.

And the format is easy to scan. Descriptions that work from general to specific. Building. Bullets. A focus on keeping important/obvious things first. There’s a miss or two here, some choices I would make differently, but, that’s BY FAR the minority. It does what an adventure should do, make using it easy. And I wouldn’t say that it’s aggressively minimalistic/terse either. Some of the text FEELS long, looking at it, but, it’s done in such as way that during play I don’t feel like it’s an issue. It’s still a breezy read and easy to scan and get to the players easily. 

I could talk more about this. The pointcrawlish manor map. The window/door external issue and so on, but, I’ll skip that. It gets A LOT right. If you can deal with the absurdity of the situation and get the party in and motivated to explore then this is a good adventure. Imagine me, talking about suspension of disbelief in a game where elves fart fireballs. 

This is $10 at itch. There are some room preview pages that gives you a good idea of the format. I’d check them out. It’s pretty good format to empulate, if you can match the energy of the writing style and situations presented.

https://ripleyc.itch.io/monkey-murder-manor

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 19 Comments